Pres. Carter had installed panels in 1979, Pres. Reagan removed them in 1986.

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On Thursday, a White House official confirmed to the Washington Post that President Barack Obama would finally make good on a 2010 promise to install solar panels on the First Family’s residence. The panels are being installed this week.

Once complete, it would make Obama the first president since President Jimmy Carter to go green. Carter's solar panels were installed in 1979, but President Ronald Reagan had them removed in 1986. It also makes the Obama family part of the rapidly expanding growth in solar energy across the United States.

According to new industry data from GTM Research, solar panels have fallen in price, and their installation and collective energy-generating capacity has consequently skyrocketed. Nearly two-thirds of the world's existing solar panels have been installed in the last 2.5 years.

“It took nearly four decades to install 50 gigawatts of [photovoltaic] capacity worldwide,” GreenTechSolar reported this week. “But in the last 2.5 years, the industry jumped from 50 gigawatts of [photovoltaic] capacity to just over 100 gigawatts. At the same time, global module prices have fallen 62 percent since January 2011. Even more amazingly, the solar industry is on track to install another 100 gigawatts worldwide by 2015—nearly doubling solar capacity in the next 2.5 years.”

The White House official, who requested anonymity from the Post as the installation is still underway, said that this project is “a part of an energy retrofit that will improve the overall energy efficiency of the building.” Three years ago, administration officials said there would be a competitive bidding process to buy “20 to 50” American-made solar panels.

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Cyrus Farivar
Cyrus is a Senior Tech Policy Reporter at Ars Technica, and is also a radio producer and author. His latest book, Habeas Data, about the legal cases over the last 50 years that have had an outsized impact on surveillance and privacy law in America, is out now from Melville House. He is based in Oakland, California. Emailcyrus.farivar@arstechnica.com//Twitter@cfarivar